Reeves County Commissioners Talk Budget

The Reeves County Commissioners Court met earlier Tuesday in hopes that they'd be able to iron out the 2011 budget and tax rate once and for all. It's become a topic of controversy in recent months. The commissioners court needs at least four county commissioners present in order to vote on the budget and tax rate. Tuesday, they were all there for the first time in a while. However, they hit another speed bump, and the vote was never taken.

The Reeves County Commissioners sat in their Executive Session for over an hour, but the big issue on the agenda was never voted on.

"We ended up tabling it till we got different opinions. Is it okay to go ahead and take action? Again, the county attorneys said it's not considered a regular term meeting," Sam Contreras, Reeves County Judge, said.

In layman's terms, Tuesdays meeting was a "called meeting" rather than a “regular meeting.” They could have voted on the budget and tax rate, but they chose not to for fear that it would cause more controversy.

"I think it would have drawn more questions that maybe it was not proper and then more research, so the safe route is just table it and we'll take it on the 27^th," Contreras said.

A budget and tax rate should have been adopted months ago, but it never happened. This raised questions from the public about what will happen at the first of the year.

"We intend to pass this. There's something that was going around that people might not get paid come January if we don't adopt this and try to alleviate that concern that all the commissioners and myself agreed to be here on the 27th so we can adopt the tax rate and the budget," Contreras said.

When it was pointed out that this was not a regular meeting, and they should not vote on the budget and tax rate...Judge Contreras and the county commissioners acted surprised, and were not happy to continue dragging this along. However, they all agreed to meet on December 27th, so the vote can finally be taken.